come back to your old black sheep man
by amoenavi
Summary: Damon would have saved her. Stefan should have saved her. Stefan is a pile of good intentions in a poorly executed body. / Dark Stefan-centric character pieces.
1. you left a bloodstain on the floor

**Prompt**: Stefan, _weep little lion man, you're not as brave as you were at the start_ at the VD Comment Ficathon

-x-

Here's a story:

There once was a boy named Stefan Salvatore.

He died.

(Want another?)

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In 1920, everything Stefan owned had a bloodstain.

The worst were the stains around the neck, the collar of the shirt.

Blood dripped down the necks of his meals, down, down, down his own. He left them drained on the streets, eyes unseeing, parents left looking for them. Dead as a doornail. The only reminder was the red, blood red spots on his white high collared dress-shirts.

He once whined about it to his brother.

Damon told him to invest in a bib.

-x-

Elena Gilbert.

Even her name sounds like a second chance.

_Elena_.

And her eyes are a warm brown and her lips are inviting and her smile is never hard or mean. She loves with her whole heart and fights with everything that's in her and she foolishly believes that that is always enough. She's an angel. She is, in essence, everything he thought Katherine was.

Or, well, everything he _wishes _he thought Katherine was.

There's a part of him that's convinced that after everything, Elena is what he deserves.

Stefan's very good at lying to himself.

-x-

There was a time when Stefan Salvatore could rip a throat out and drain it while musing on the economic situation of the nation.

Killing was nothing. Humans were nothing. He lived on a day to day - neck to neck, actually.

(There was a nun once, the red oozed out over her habit, patterns forming. He wondered if she saw the face of God when she died.

He left her face down in an alley.)

He glosses over those years with a vague, "I wasn't always this good."

-x-

He always tells Damon to face the past. Own up to his boatload of mistakes.

(Stefan is constantly on the run from his own.)

Sometimes the irony threatens to suffocate him.

-x-

In 2010, Stefan uses bleach and detergent and softener and soap and water and tears and tumbling and scrubbing but -

The bloodstains still won't come out.

-x-


	2. you're a killer at heart

**Prompt:** Stefan, c_arry your violence like a lost limb itches and aches; you can't forget _at the lj VD Comment Ficathon Part 2

-x-

He leaves Mystic Falls that night, blood still staining the skin around his mouth.

-x-

He kills a family.

On the outskirts of Atlanta, a small house with tears in the fence and a caving in roof. The mother looks to be about fifty, two blonde teenage daughters, a burly father with a salt and pepper moustache. When he bursts in, they're sitting at the dining table, hands clasped together to say grace.

He rips open their necks and sucks them dry.

-x-

It comes back easier than expected. The killing.

Some part of Stefan had always hoped that he had gotten past it all, that he had evolved beyond the enjoyment and the need. After all these years of denying himself, of being good, he convinces himself he's changed.

The skill with which he quickly drains his victims, the precision, the satisfaction. They prove him wrong.

-x-

The two of them move out west within a week, leaving a trail of bodies behind them. Stefan thinks idly that Damon and Elena must be coming after them by now and then he thinks that Damon is alive because of _this_ and then Stefan stops thinking and continues to rip.

He steals a map at a gas station right before they torch it; he writes down the number of people he's killed in each state, each township. He skips over Mystic Falls, Virginia.

Too many to count.

-x-  
>Klaus and Stefan. Stefan and Klaus.<p>

It's almost like something out of an old horror story told to children: a pair of bloodthirsty monsters who wander the earth looking for something to destroy. No matter how fast you run or how far you go, they will be one step ahead.

Klaus tells him of centuries past, the history he's lived through, the history he's made. He tells him about bloody rebellions and hostile takeovers and there is nothing good and there is nothing kind in these stories. Somehow it always circles back to the quiet pursuit of the perfect ripper. The partner in crime that Elijah could not be.

Klaus' favorite story is of Stefan's 1917 massacre. He goes into excruciating detail of the angles of the necks, the blood. He talks about how the towns down the way were afraid to go outside their houses for days, the river running red with the blood of the thousands upstream.

It's the only story Klaus tells with an emotion.

Pride.

-x-

He almost calls home once, when Klaus is off burning the bodies of a prayer group in Provo. He gets as far as the seventh digit before hanging up.

He still has a decade of lives to take before he can rebuild his own.

-x-

He stands over the bloody remnants of a family reunion in Nevada and feels no guilt.

-x-


	3. i tear away at the seams

_-x-_

_The Ripper, _they call him. They call him as he pushes a stake into their chest and watches the life drain out of their skin, following Klaus' orders as usual. The Ripper. It's said with horror and fascination, spoken softly and out of breath as they waste their last moments parroting a name.

_What do you get out of it?_ they ask, the others, the ones Klaus allows to live. _Is it some sadistic pleasure?_

Stefan shrugs his shoulders, indifference pulling his face into an emotionless mask.

_A monster amongst monsters, _they say, hiding their fear behind bravado and false admiration. They pretend they feel no fear, they pretend they do not care, they pretend they've flipped the switch.

Stefan knows better than anyone that there is no such thing as a switch.

He feels every kill, he tastes every fear and spike in adrenaline and he lives every one's last moments on the earth. He and they are the same.

He's clawing at his own flesh, breaking his own bone, tearing himself limb from limb until the blood puddles on the floor turn into a still lake where he can see his own reflection, still in one piece, still immortal, still bloodthirsty.

So he drops what remains of himself and grabs another one, pulls muscle from bone and feels ligaments snap as he twists his own arms off again, breaks them into pieces he can manage, breaks them so he can't hurt anyone anymore. He lets the parts fall to the ground when he's done sucking them dry and he stares.

(The remainders of the bodies are women. They are in pieces on the floor and Stefan is standing whole in the place where he killed them, flexing the muscles he thought he tore apart as he looks down at the lives he took.)

They don't understand.

Stefan rips himself apart every time.

-x-


	4. back and forth through my mind

**Prompt:** Stefan,_ madness is like gravity; all it takes is a little push _

-x-

There's blood on the corner of Elena's mouth.

It's staining the white white skin underneath it, white with death and rebirth and innocence and he thinks there might be a metaphor behind the staining of her innocent white skin but he can't think around the blood.

She doesn't notice it, staring at Damon with wide eyes as he tells her to slow down her breathing. "Control it," his brother says, just the right amount of force. "Don't let it control you." Elena takes another breath in - slowly - and the blood begins to drip down the side of her mouth. _How can she not feel it_ - it's all Stefan feels.

His tongue dips out from his mouth to the phantom bloodspot, licking away - nothing. There's nothing on the corner of his lips because it's not his blood to drink - he gave it up, remember?

He forgets sometimes too.

Elena's veins are receding and her fangs begin to shrink back into her mouth; there's no trace of the monster she just became except for the drip of red blood that still dangles from her mouth. She's a monster - the girl he loves is a monster now, she's the thing he hates, and it's his fault - _his fault_ for letting her drown. Damon would have saved her. Stefan should have saved her. Stefan is a pile of good intentions in a poorly executed body. (But is it really good intentions if he didn't want to deal with her hatred? Was it less selfish to let her die than to live with the very thing he could not stand?) Damon is raising a hand to wipe the blood off, he's - wasting. That's_wasteful._

Stefan blurs across the small floorspace of the morgue, grabs Damon's hand.

Presses a kiss to the corner of Elena's mouth, lets his tongue soak up the blood beginning to dry on the side of her face. Moves back to her mouth to pretend that that was his end goal. (The blood is human. Type O+. Lukewarm from staying on Elena's skin for so long. It's the most delicious thing he's had since he "got good" again.)

He stops kissing Elena and looks back at his brother; Damon's eyes are a cold blue, a wary blue. His brother's eyes hold too many concerns - he's supposed to be the bad brother. He's the big, bad brother who looks out for himself. (But maybe Stefan's now the bad brother - he killed the girl they love. Isn't that what the bad guy does?)

He presses another kiss to Elena just to prove the first wasn't about the blood. He tries to be gentle before realizing he doesn't have to be. (She's dead. He killed her. She's a monster now - a chasm of blood just like him.)

He looks into her eyes and sees wariness where before he saw only trust. Confusion when he saw surety. (Here's a secret he'll never tell: she will _never_ forgive him for letting her die and she will _never_ tell him.)

"Lighten up, brother." He claps a hand onto Damon's shoulder, the other arm wrapped tightly around Elena. "Looks like we've got ourselves an immortal girlfriend." Elena flinches away. Damon's eyes close of their own accord, weary.

He has human blood in his system and he killed the girl he loves.

So they want to make him the bad guy?

Fine. He's a ripper.

(A ripper doesn't stop.)

-x-


End file.
